What is most important to understand about the revelations of massive message interception by the U.S. government is this:
In counterterrorist terms, it is a farce.
The
fallacy behind the current intelligence strategy of the United States,
the collection of massive amounts of phone calls, emails, and
even credit card expenditures, up to 3 billion phone calls a day alone,
not to mention the government spying on the mass media. It is this:
In
the real, practical world this is—though it might seem
counterintuitive—untrue. You don't need--to put it in an exaggerated
way--an atomic bomb against a flea. And isn't it absurd that the United
States can't finish a simple border fence to keep out potential
terrorists, can't stop a would-be terrorist in the U.S. army who gives a
power point presentation on why he is about to shoot people (Major
Nadal Hassan), can't follow up on Russian intelligence warnings about
Chechen terrorist contacts (the Boston bombing), or a dozen similar
incidents must now collect every telephone call in the country? A
system in which a photo shop clerk has to stop an attack on Fort Dix by
overcoming his fear of appearing "racist" to report a cell of terrorists
or brave passengers must jump a would-be "underpants bomber" from
Nigeria because his own father's warning that he was a terrorist was
insufficient?
And
how about a country where terrorists and terrorist supporters visit the
White House, hang out with the FBI, advise the U.S. government on
counter-terrorist policy (even while, like CAIR) advising Muslims not to
cooperate with law enforcement, and are admiringly quoted in the media
yet a documented, detailed revelation of this behavior in MERIA Journal
by Patrick Poole, which should bring down the government, "Blind to
Terror: The U.S. Government's Disastrous Muslim Outreach Efforts and
the Impact on U.S. Middle East Policy." does not get covered by a
single mass media outlet?
Imagine this scene:
"Sir, we have a telephone call about a potential terrorist attack!"
"Not now, Smithers, I'm giving a tour of our facility to some supporters of Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood."
Instead of this kind of thing the two key tasks of counterterrorism are as follows:
First,
it is not the quantity of material that counts but the need to locate
and
correctly understand the most vital material. This requires your
security forces to understand the ideological, psychological, and
organizational nature of the threat.
Second, it is necessary to be ready to act on this information not only in strategic but in political terms.
If
one looks at the great intelligence failures of the past, these two
points quickly become obvious. Take for example the Japanese surprise
attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. U.S. naval intelligence had
broken Japanese codes. They had the information needed to conclude the
attack would take place. Yet a focus on the key to the problem was not
achieved. The important messages were not read and interpreted; the
strategic mindset of the leadership was not in place.
Or,
in another situation, the plan of Nazi Germany to invade the USSR in
1941 or of the time and place of the Allied invasion of Normandy beach
in 1944 was not assessed properly, with devastating results. Of course,
the techniques were more primitive then, but so were the means of
concealment.
For
instance, the Czech intelligence services, using railroad workers as
informants, knew about a big build-up for a German offensive against the
USSR. Soviet leader Joseph Stalin overrode the warnings. Soviet
analysts predicting a Nazi invasion were punished. Nothing would have
changed if more material was collected.
So
what needs to be in place, again, is to focus on the highest priority
material, to analyze correctly what is available, to have leaders accept
it, and to act. If the U.S. government can't even figure out what the
Muslim Brotherhood is like or the dangers of supporting Islamists to
take over Syria, or the fact that the Turkish regime is an American
enemy, or can't even teach military officers who the enemy is, what's it
going to do with scores of billions of telephone call traffic to
overcome terrorism? It isn't even using the intelligence material is
already has!
If,
however, the material is almost limitless, that actually weakens a
focus on the most needed intelligence regarding the most likely
terrorist threats. Imagine, for example, going through billions of
telephone calls even with high-speed computers rather than, say,
following up a tip from Russian intelligence on a young Chechen man in
Boston who is in contact with terrorists or, for instance, the
communications between a Yemeni al-Qaida leader and a U.S. army major
who is assigned as a psychiatrist to Fort Hood.
That
is why the old system of getting warrants, focusing on individual email
addresses, or sites, or telephones makes sense, at least if it is only
used properly. Then those people who are communicating with known
terrorists can be traced further. There are no technological magic
spells. If analysts are incompetent, blocked from understanding the
relationship between Islam and terrorism, bound up by Political
Correctness and fear of career costs, and leaders unwilling to take
proper action, who cares how much data was collected?
At
a time when American leaders and the social atmosphere are discouraging
citizens from reporting potential terrorism (the photo store clerk; the
flight school instructor back before September 11, the brave passengers
who jumped a hijacker and then had to worry about lawsuits because they
violated someone's civil rights, the attempts to take away guns that
wouldn't stop terrorists), why is a giant facility in Utah going to do a
better job?
Decision-makers
and intelligence analysts only have so many hours in the day. There can
only be so many meetings; only so many priorities. And the policymaking
pyramid narrows rapidly toward the top. There is a point of diminishing
returns for the size of an intelligence bureaucracy. Lower-priority
tasks proliferate; too much paper is generated and meetings are held;
the system clogs
when it has too much data.
Note
the parallelism between this broader terrorism policy and the current
philosophy of airport security. In both cases, everyone is considered
equally suspect. Profiling is minimized. Instead of focusing on the,
let’s say one hundred of those who might be of special interest, a great
deal of time, attention, and resources has been spent on ten million
others. This has got to reduce effectiveness.
The
increased costs of security, Obama has told us, amounts to a cost of $1
trillion. Of course, people would say that such money was well spent.
Yet in security as in every other aspect of government, money can be
spent well or badly, even counterproductively.
Al-Qaida
is even saying openly that it is switching to a strategy of encouraging
isolated attacks. Within 24 hours a British soldier is murdered on a
street in London after he seeks and fails to obtain terrorist training
in Somalia, and a French soldier is attacked. In Toulouse, France, a
terrorist kills or cripples soldiers and Jewish schoolchildren. There
are dozens of examples.
Vast amounts of money and resources, though, are being spent in preparing for an exact reply of September 11.
And
remember that the number of terrorists caught by the TSA hovers around
the zero level. The shoe, underpants, and Times Square bombers weren’t
even caught by security at all and many other such cases can be listed.
In addition to this, the U.S.-Mexico border
is practically open.
The
ultimate problem is that the number of terrorists is very low and the
fact is that for anyone who isn’t insane their characteristics are
pretty clear, that is they are about 99 percent revolutionary and
violent Islamists.
Obama has now admitted three very important things.
First, the war on terrorism has not been won.
Second,
the war on al-Qaida has not really been won, since its continued
campaigning is undeniable and it has even grown in Syria, partly thanks
to U.S. policy.
Third,
the biggest threat on the American homeland is autonomous terrorists
who have been inspired by al-Qaida but are not technically part of the
nomination. (That allows Obama to claim to be winning the war on
al-Qaida).
What he has
not yet admitted is that the Muslim Brotherhood and other terrorist
groups or sponsors are controlling Egypt, Tunisia, the Gaza Strip,
Lebanon, Turkey, Sudan, Syria, and Iran, while terrorists run free in
the Palestinian Authority, Iraq, Pakistan, and Afghanistan, is not
conducive to the protection of America against terrorism. The fact that
his policy promotes some of these problems makes things even worse.
Yet
the new, expensive, expansive, and time-consuming technological methods
are relatively ineffective against the current priorities of
anti-American terrorist
groups.
Incidentally,
Obama policy has been disastrous against a four factor, radical
Islamists—though not al-Qaida taking over places. Compared to the time
Obama came to office, the Islamists who support violence against America
now rule Egypt, Tunisia, the Gaza Strip, Lebanon, and perhaps soon
Syria. Offenses have been stepped up in Somalia, Yemen; are being
maintained in Iraq; and of course still rule over Syria and Iran. In
Turkey, an Islamist terror-supporting regime has been embraced by Obama.
This represents a massive retreat even if it is a largely unnoticed one.
So the problem of growing government spying is three-fold.
--First, it is against the American system and reduces liberty.
--Second, it is a misapplication of resources, in other words money is being spent and liberty sacrificed for no real gain.
--Third, since government decisionmaking and policy about international terrorism is very bad the threat is increasing.
If
you don’t get value for money or enhanced security while freedom is
being reduced and the enemy is getting stronger it certainly isn’t a
bargain.
http://pjmedia.com/barryrubin/2013/06/10/why-expanded-government-spying-doesnt-mean-better-security-against-terrorism/
Professor Barry Rubin, Director, Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center http://www.gloria-center.org
Forthcoming Book: Nazis, Islamists, and the Making of the Modern Middle East (Yale University Press)
The Rubin Report blog http://rubinreports.blogspot.com/
He is a featured columnist at PJM http://pajamasmedia.com/barryrubin/.
Editor, Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA) Journal http://www.gloria-center.org
He is a featured columnist at PJM http://pajamasmedia.com/barryrubin/.
Editor, Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA) Journal http://www.gloria-center.org
Editor Turkish Studies, http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/ftur20#.UZs4pLUwdqU
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